Shutters which fold over window and door openings have been in use and have varying degrees of custom fit. In a typical window installation a poor quality of installation might include spacers which actually move the pivot point for the shutters and shutter sets toward the center of the assembly. This represents the worst solution to make up for a shutter set which is forced to fit a larger window.
In other more sophisticated assemblies the user can add decorative spacers to the shutter doors at either of their vertical sides with the whole shutter pivoting with respect to a window opening. Where the components for the typical unsophisticated user are provided in a pre-finished state, the unsophisticated user has an opportunity to “build out” by shims, shutter doors. The “build out” can be accomplished to keep a decorative horizontal balance in the shutter set.
Given the generally prominent vertical side rails which form the main structural components of the shutter doors, unsophisticated users have had little choice in determining the vertical height of individual shutter doors. Some vertical customizability can be had by specifying the border thickness of a support frame. However, this still restricts the opening the same as vertical blocks added to extend the pivot point of the shutters.
Although unsophisticated end users have been only partially empowered to perform good customization of self installed shutter sets using finished components, the goal of using finished components still holds a great deal of value for persons in the chain of sales and service from professional installers to manufacturers and assemblers. One of the main objectives is to enable as much cutting and painting to remain at the base manufacturing site. In other words, the key is to limit cutting to the original raw materials cutting which occurs at the factory using precision machines, and to limit painting to the professional, automated painting which occurs at the factory.
Looking at it from this viewpoint, most user constructable or modifiable shutter assemblies are configured to provide some activity on the part of the user or installer other than cutting and painting in order to provide matching with the ultimate user's window size. Further, because the user matching activities have been traditionally limited, the user's ability to affect the physical outcome of the shutter installation has also been limited. Much of the variation has been focussed upon obtaining a window opening fit, and thus the non-variable portion has centered upon the size of the louvers, and the area and shape of the louver space.
What is therefore needed is a further, deeper method of modularization which makes use of pre-cut and pre-painted components which can be user specified to not only match a given window opening, but which can be user specified to match more subtle user preferences.